Almost as bad as the lingering agony, and lost souls, was the smell. The copper tang of blood filled the hall; it was potent within my nostrils and on my tongue. There was something rotting somewhere, multiple something’s probably, multiple things that I did notwant to see. Jenna was so pale that the blue veins in her eyelids were sharply visible. Her lips were nearly the same color as her face as they trembled; her eyes were filled with unshed tears.
Lloyd had started to move, but his steps were hesitant, weary. Bret followed behind but Jenna and I hung back for a moment. We had not come through the front door; these rooms all belonged to patients. These doors held endless possibilities, and none of them were good. It was like a funhouse, but this one was full of horrors straight from hell.
Slowly we began to follow Bret and Lloyd down the hall. I tried to keep my gaze focused ahead, but every once in awhile it would stray into one of the rooms. So far they all appeared empty, devoid of all human remains, but judging by the increasing rancid smell I didn’t think it was going to stay that way. The three of them were lucky enough to be able to pull their shirts up over their noses, I wasn’t so lucky. I knew I sure as hell didn’t smell good right now, but I definitely smelled better than this damn place and I definitely preferred my own odor over the hospitals right now.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Jenna whispered.
“There’s no going back now.”
Bret’s tone of voice was far harsher than normal, tension radiated off of him; there was a bleakness in his eyes that I despised. Jenna recoiled slightly, wounded by his cold attitude and demeanor. I wanted to reach out to her, to soothe her, but I could barely keep the gun in my shaking hand let alone comfort someone. A strange buzzing reached my ears; I frowned as Lloyd stopped suddenly. His face turned three shades of green as he gaped into the room on his right. His hand trembled as he reached forward and pulled the door shut. I was grateful for that; I didn’t want to see what was in that room as I now understood the source of the buzzing.
Flies.
“Please don’t let us find the maternity ward,” Jenna whispered.
Bile rose up my throat; I gagged softly but somehow managed to keep it suppressed. My hands were shaking. My palms were so sweaty that I was beginning to fear I would not be able to keep hold of my gun if something didattack us. The thought of stumbling across innocent babies was atrocious; I wouldn’t be able to handle it. For the first time I realized that there were children out there, completely defenseless children that had died when The Freezing had occurred, and not all of their deaths had resulted at the hands of the aliens. Some of them had occurred because there had been no one left to care for them, no one left to feed, bathe, and change them. They had been alone, frightened, and unable to defend themselves against the monsters that had taken our world from us.
A sob lodged in my throat, I blinked back the tears that clogged my eyes. I hadn’t thought of the defenseless before. There hadn’t been time through the all consuming need to survive. There hadn’t been time through my own grief and loss. Now, I could not shake the thought, or the fury that came boiling up with it. The aliens would be made to pay, one way or another, I would help find a way to make them
pay
I just didn’t know how, or where, to start. As long as we stayed alive there was always hope, always a chance that we would one day destroy them as surely as they were destroying us. We just couldn’t let them succeed first.
Lloyd took a turn in the hall, going in low and fast as he moved swiftly to the other side. He nodded to Bret before sweeping further down the hall. We moved more rapidly through the hospital, driven swiftly on by the hollow emptiness and desolation surrounding us.
The pharmacy was the first thing we came across. The door was open, not because it had been left that way, but because it had been bent in, bowed at the bottom and then ripped upward. The metal frame of the door had been ripped half off, it hung at an angle to the floor. Lloyd pocketed his gun to pull his pack from his back and swing it forward. He held it against his chest as he crawled under the twisted metal remains.
“Grab as many essentials as you can,” he commanded as we followed him into the large room.
Shelves lined the room, dividing it into different sections and blocking Lloyd as he disappeared into the back. Some of the shelves had been knocked over, broken bottles and discarded pills littered the floor. I grit my jaw as pills crunched and snapped softly beneath my feet. I knew that the crunching wasn’t that loud but it seemed as loud as gunshots to me in the hushed building. I searched the shelves but they had already been picked over, either by other survivors, or stripped on purpose by the aliens. Then again the aliens had brought life saving, advanced medicine, with them upon arrival. For all I knew we had stopped making any drugs that could have helped us months ago in favor of what the aliens had to offer us. Fury simmered through me at the sheer ignorance and stupidity we had shown by believing the line of crap they had fed us.
It had gotten us nothing but heartache and death.
I ignored the white tennis shoe lying on the ground, struggling not to think about the person that had left it behind as I moved past the row of antacids. I supposed heartburn sucked, but it wasn’t on my list of priorities for lifesaving necessities. Neither were birth control pills or prescription vitamins.
“Here.”
I caught the bottle Lloyd tossed at me and turned it over in my hand to read the label. Doxycycline. I nodded as I twisted the top off and dry swallowed one of them. I hoped it was enough to fight off whatever microbes might be multiplying in my body right now due to that hideous thing. There was no way to know what kind of germs those things might be carrying with them. The label said to only take one, but I decided to take another. I was probably going to want some of those antacids afterwards, but I didn’t care I wanted whatever germs might be lurking within me dead.
I was frightened that even now there might be something taking up residence in my body, changing me, or even destroying me. Perhaps eating me from the inside out. I had seen the Alien movies, and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, far too often for me not to have all kinds of frightening and creepy thoughts. I shuddered, and though I knew it wasn’t a good idea, I took a third pill before capping the bottle.
I stuffed some extra strength Tylenol and Ibuprofen into my bag but all of the harder painkillers were gone. I found five boxes of antibiotic cream. I eagerly opened one, bracing myself for the sting as I gently wiped it over my heated and bubbled flesh. My breath hissed out of me, my teeth grated sharply together, but I fully intended to keep dousing my shoulder with the crap if it would help kill off anything that creature had left on me. I hoped someone found some burn cream somewhere; it would be nice to have something that soothed the fierce sting of my tortured skin.
I shoved the rest into my bag and took a deep breath as I zipped it closed. Everything seemed to be going too fast, too rapidly. I felt as if I hadn’t had a chance to just stop and think since we had set out on this mission. But then, what was I going to think about? My father, my mother, Cade, the lost children? Abby and Aiden? Was I going to drive myself crazy with worry about them?
It was better not to think, but it was also exhausting. There were so many suppressed emotions roiling around within me that I could barely breathe sometimes. There was so much pain and loss lingering within me that there were times I wasn’t sure I could go on. And in this moment, at this time, I was trapped within that feeling.
It hit me out of nowhere, the weight of my grief rolled up to bury me within its cloak of oppression and pain. Though I tried to stop it, the sudden longing for Cade surged up out of nowhere. It rose up like a tsunami, towering above me for a moment before crashing down and burying me within its crushing depths. Pain choked my lungs and throat as surely as ocean water would have choked me. My hands fisted tight, I inhaled a shaky breath as I struggled to reign in the crushing agony trying to consume me.